environment and the draw-a-man test: the …
TRANSCRIPT
ENVIRONMENT AND THE DRAW-A-MAN TEST: THEPERFORMANCE OF INDIAN CHILDREN
BY ROBERT J. HAVIGHURST, MINNA KOROL GUNTHER, AND INEZ ELLIS PRATT
Committee on Human Development, The University of Chicago
THE Goodenough Draw-a-Man Testwas administered to 325 Indianchildren aged six through eleven
in the Hopi, Zuni, Zia, Papago, Navaho,and Sioux tribes. This was one of awide variety of psychological testsand socio-psychological methods usedto throw light on the mental, socialand physical development of Indianchildren.1
The Draw-a-Man Test was chosenbecause it seemed probable that Indianchildren would be under little or noexperiential handicap in this test. Asit turned out, the Indian children didbetter than white children, and thestudy became to some extent a studyof environmental influence on children'sperformance on the Draw-a-Man Test.
The argument advanced by Good-enough for the value of the test is thatin young children a close relationship isapparent between concept development asshown in drawing, and general intelligence.. . . The order of development in drawing isremarkably constant, even among children ofvery different social antecedents—close agree-
1 This is one of a series of articles reporting anintensive study of the development of Indian chil-dren. Techniques used in the study were drawnfrom psychology, anthropology, sociology, andmedical science. Representatives of these sciencesworked together in planning, conducting, andinterpreting the results of the study under theauspices of the Committee on Human Develop-ment of the University of Chicago and the UnitedStates Office of Indian Affairs, which supportedthe study financially and worked with the Uni-versity of Chicago group in planning and conduct-ing it. Articles like the present one will appearin appropriate journals to describe the variousaspects of the study. These will serve to docu-ment a series o£ monographs designed to integrateand interpret the material of each of the tribes.
ment, both as regards the method of indicat-ing the separate items in a drawing and theorder in which these items tend to appear.This is especially true as regards the humanfigure, probably because of its universalfamiliarity. (3, p. 12)
Several studies have been made ofIndians with the use of the Draw-a-ManTest. Goodenough (4), in 1926, re-ported for 79 Indian children in theHoopa Valley (California) ReservationSchool an average IQ of 85.6. Thesechildren were in Grades i to 4. Tel-ford (15), in 1932, reported results onthe Draw-a-Man Test for 225 NorthDakota Indian children. These childrenranged from kindergarten through sixthgrade. The average IQ was 88.6, andthere were no consistent changes in IQwith age. However, he found an in-crease of IQ with length of schoolingfor the first two years, after which therewas no change. Telford was interestedin the relationship between the degreeof Indian blood and the test perform-ance, and he concluded that his resultsshow a lack of any consistent relation-ship between the two.
In 1933 Eells (2) reported a study ofAlaskan children whom he classified asEskimos, Aleuts, and Indians. TheIndians lived in Southeastern Alaska.His results were:
EskimoAleutsIndians
89.693.391.6
(364 children^(105 children)(58 children)
Rohrer (13) reported in 1942 on astudy of Osage (Oklahoma) children.The Osage Indians are well off, finan-
5°
ENVIRONMENT AND THE DRAW-A-MAN TEST
cially. English is their language. Theirchildren go to the public schools. TheDraw-a-Man Test was given to 125 (outof 331) Osage children in Grades i to 3of the elementary schools of a com-munity. Children in outlying schoolswere omitted. An equal number ofwhite children in the same classroomswere tested. The mean IQ for theIndian children was 103.8; for whitechildren, 102.9.
Dennis (i) gave the Draw-a-ManTest to 152 Hopi children aged sixthrough ten, in 1941. The average IQwas 108.3, with a significant sex differ-ence. Boys averaged 116.6 and girlsaveraged 99.5. Since many of the chil-dren tested by Dennis were tested againin the present study, our results will beof special interest in comparison withthose of Dennis.
Russell (14) gave the Draw-a-ManTest and collected spontaneous draw-ings from 41 Zuni children. He foundan average IQ of 105, with no signifi-cant sex difference.
SELECTION OF SUBJECTS AND SAMPLINGPROCEDURES
Children from six Indian tribes weretested in the present study. The tribeswere: Sioux, Navaho, Papago, Hopi,Zuni, and Zia. The Hopi, Zuni, andZia Indians practically all live withintheir respective pueblo towns. Theother tribes are much larger in popula-tion and cover wider areas of land. TheNavaho, with 50,000 people, inhabitingan area of 23,570 square miles, muchof which is unfit even for grazing, arespread over the widest territory. TheSioux and Papago have large reserva-tions, with a dispersed population. TheHopi number about 3500 living in elevenvillages on three mesas surrounded bythe Navaho Reservation.
Wher*e the population is dispersed, as
on the Sioux, Navaho, and Papagoreservations, there is usually a wide vari-ation of living conditions, economicwelfare, amount of schooling, and con-tact with the neighboring white culture.Consequently, two or more communi-ties were chosen for study in these tribesin an effort to discover variations withina given tribe.
When the communities which wereto be studied had been selected thereremained the problem of selecting thechildren to be tested. The principlesfollowed in selection of subjects were:(i) All children from six througheleven were to be tested unless the num-ber was too large. (2) If the numberwas too large, a random sample of thisgroup was to be made if possible. (3)If a random sample could not be ob-tained, the sampling procedure was tobe described and recorded in detail.
The list of children, with their ages,was in each case taken from the schoolcensus. In some tribes the birth datesare not always definite or accurate. Therecorded age of a child was checkedby asking him and his parents his age.In some doubtful cases, church recordswere of value in establishing the age.Where the contact with white culturewas precarious, birth dates were notavailable for all children and in a fewcases the field workers had to be con-tent with getting an estimate of the yearof birth.
Information is summarized in Tablei for each of the tribes, giving numberof children in the various communitiesand numbers actually tested, and de-scribing sampling procedures that wereused.
The Arthur Performance Test wasgiven to the same groups of children (5).We succeeded in giving the Arthurtest to a larger proportion of our samplethan the proportion from whom wesecured drawings. We got drawings
TABLE i
DATA ON SELECTION AND SAMPLING
TRIBE
COMMUNITY
No. of children 6 through n
No. of children in sample
No. of children tested
HOP!
ORAIBI
53
53
46
FIRSTMESA
52*
52
32
ZUNI
c. 300 t
4242
ZlA
36
36
32
NAVAHO
SHIPROCK
c. 150 J
57
47
PAP AGO
TOPAWA
606048
HlCKIWAN-
GoVo
59 §
59
25
Sioux
KYLE
C. 100 ||
43
30
PINERIDGE
c. 300 |1
26
23
§
ffiC3
c?2!
* Excludes children from the Tewa-speaking pueblo of Hano, and also some 25 children of predominantly Tewa affiliation in the other pueblos.t About half of the children attend the Indian Service day school, the others going to a Catholic or a Christian-Reformed mission school. There is
said to be no great difference between those who attend a mission school and those who attend the government day school. Every sixth name was takenfrom the Indian Service school roll and these children, together with their siblings, made up the sample.
I This number is a rough estimate. There were 57 children attending day school, and they constituted the sample.§ In this isolated area, about 40 per cent of the children have never been to school. Most of those who were tested were in school.|| The research supervisor, a stranger to the communities, selected the samples so as to make the blood mixture conform to the pattern of the
reservation, with, correct percentage of full bloods, intermediate mixed bloods, and predominantly white mixed bloods.
ENVIRONMENT AND THE DRAW-A-MAN TEST 53
from more than 80 per cent of thosewho took the Arthur test in six of thenine groups. The range was from 42to 100 per cent. Accordingly, we usedthe Arthur test data on those who tookthe Draw-a-Man Test to find outwhether our Draw-a-Man groups wererepresentative samples.
We have tried to determine howrepresentative our samples were by ask-ing two questions: (i) Is the groupfrom whom we secured drawings repre-sentative of the larger group whom wetested with the Arthur test ? (2) Is thegroup tested with the Arthur test repre-sentative of the entire group of childrenin the community?
In answer to the first question weinferred that a group from whom wesecured drawings was representative ofthe larger group who took the Arthurtest if the mean Arthur IQ's of the"Arthur" group and its subgroup werenearly the same. This proved to be thecase in all of our groups. The greatestdifference between the mean ArthurIQ's of the larger group and the groupfor which we have drawings is 2.8points, in the case of the Oraibi (Hopi)group. This difference could easilyoccur as a result of chance.
In answer to the second question, weare sure in some cases that the grouptested with the Arthur test is repre-sentative of the entire group of childrenin the community, and uncertain onthis point in other cases.
We can put the groups into categorieswith reference to the confidence we mayhave that the group actually tested withthe Draw-a-Man Test represents thetotal group of children in the com-munity. These categories are:
A. The group tested is almost surely repre-sentative of the total group.
Zia, Hopi (Oraibi)B. The group tested is probably representa-
tive of the group given the Arthur test,
and this group is probably representa-tive of the whole group.
Zuni, Sioux (Kyle), Hopi (FirstMesa)
C, We cannot say that the group tested isrepresentative of the whole group, butthe group tested is probably representa-tive of the group given the Arthur test.
Sioux (Pine Ridge), Navaho (Ship-rock), Papago (Hickiwan-GuVo)
The Papago (Topawa) group does notfit any of these categories and will bediscussed later.
ADMINISTRATION AND SCORING OFTHE TESTS
The test was administered by teachersin the schools which the childrenattended during the school year 1942-43. In most cases, the regular classroomteacher administered the test. In a smallproportion of cases, one teacher gave thetest to all the children in a school. Afew tests were given by field researchworkers to children who were not inschool. The Draw-a-Man Test wasgiven as the ninth drawing in a seriesof drawings or paintings, of which thefirst eight were "free drawings." In thefirst eight drawings the children werefree to choose size of paper, medium,and subject. The teachers were in-structed to exert just as little influenceas possible. The "free drawing test"was a projective test, designed for thestudy of personality manifestations.This free drawing experience probablyhad some effect on the children's Draw-a-Man performance. Although theteachers were given the instructions inGoodenough's manual, teachers as wellas children appear to have been habitu-ated to the "free drawing" conditionsso that a considerable variety of draw-ings resulted from the Draw-a-Manassignment. A few children coloredtheir drawings, others drew women,and others drew men in the act of per-forming various operations. While this
54 R. J. HAVIGHURST, M. K. GUNTHER AND I. E. PRATT
unusual freedom made scoring difficult,and caused us to throw out a few draw-ings in which significant details werecovered by paint or were hidden behindother objects, it probably reduced thetendency of the teachers to make sug-gestions to the children about theirdrawings. Thus the drawings wereobtained when teachers and childrenwere relatively "relaxed." The Navaho(Shiprock) drawing test was given firstin the series, before the "free drawings."
The tests were scored according toGoodenough's standards.2 We scoreddrawings for children from six througheleven, whereas Goodenough does notrecommend the test for use with sub-jects older than ten. Our reason forusing the tests of the eleven-year-oldswas to secure more cases for statisticalstudy. The effect of including eleven-year-olds in the study is to lower theaverage IQ of the group.
RESULTS
The mean IQ's obtained on theDraw-a-Man Test for the variousgroups of children in the study areshown in Table 2. This table also showsthe mean Arthur IQ's for the Draw-a-Man groups, and the mean ArthurIQ's for the larger groups who weretested with the Arthur test. This lastfigure is for children in the age groupsix to fifteen, and therefore is basedupon a larger group than the numberactually shown in the first column.Since there was no systematic variation
- While we .were developing our scoring tech-nique, we sent a set of 20 Indian children'sdrawings to Miss Goodenough, who helped us byasking one o£ her research assistants, Miss HarrietBlodgett, to score these drawings. We comparedour scores with those of Miss Blodgett, andchanged our methods on several points to agreewith hers. Each of our drawings was scored bytwo persons. One of us (M. K, G.) scored allthe drawings, and the others of us (I. E. P. andR. J. H.) each scored half of them. The twoscores for each drawing were averaged.
of Arthur IQ with age, comparison ofthe mean values of the Arthur IQ forthe larger group with the mean valuesof the Arthur IQ for the smaller groupshould help us to decide whether thesmaller group is representative of thelarger group.
Table 2 also gives the Draw-a-ManIQ's for a group of white children ina small middle-western city. This groupcomprised nearly all of the ten-year.-oldsin the town, and is a fairly good cross-section of middle-western white chil-dren. All but eight of the 66 childrenwere ten years old, the other eight fall-ing between eleven and eleven yearsand three months. For this group ofwhite children we do not have ArthurIQ's, but we have IQ's on the Cornell-Coxe Performance Test which has someelements in common with the Arthurtest.
The Indian children exceeded thenorms for white children by a statisti-cally significant amount in seven of thenine groups. They exceeded their ownArthur IQ's in seven of the nine groups.The white children scored lower on theDraw-a-Man Test than on the Cornell-Coxe. It appears that the Indianchildren gave a definitely superior per-formance to that of white children onthe Draw-a-Man Test.
Mean IQ's and standard deviationsare given for each tribal group and forthe midwest group on the Draw-a-ManTest in Table 3.
Sex differences were manifested inseveral of the groups. In the Pueblogroups (Zuni, Zia, and Hopi), the boyswere definitely superior to the girls atall age levels between six and eleven.The Sioux boys showed a smallersuperiority over the girls, but one whichis statistically significant. The Navahogroup showed no difference betweenthe sexes. The Papago Topawa groupshowed the girls definitely superior to
ENVIRONMENT AND THE DRAW-A-MAN TEST 55
TABLE a
DRAW-A-MAN IQ COMPARED WITH ARTHUR IQ
Hopi (Oraibi)BoysGirlsTotal
Hopi (First Mesa)BoysGirlsTotal
ZuniBoysGirlsTotal
ZiaBoysGirlsTotal
Navaho (Shiprock)BoysGirlsTotal
Papago (Topawa)BoysGirlsTotal
Papago (Hickiwan-GuVo)BoysGirlsTotal
Sioux (Pine Ridge)BoysGirlsTotal
Sioux (Kyle)BoysGirlsTotal
Midwest (Whites)
BoysGirlsTotal
No. GIVENDRAW-A-MAN
TESTAGE 6-1 1 *
2422
46
15
1732
182442
171532
20
27
47
242549
1312
25
10
1323
141630
283866
MEAN IQDRAW-A-MAN,
AGE 6—i I *
120.599-5
110,5
126.7108.6117.1
122. I
104.0
HI. 7
Il6.4
IOI.9
IOQ.6
HO. I
109.4
109.7
iQi.8115.2108.5
104.9102.2
103.6
107.8
97.6102.0
H6.9
I I O - 3
II3.6
98.3103.4
IOI.2
MEAN IQDRAW-A-MAN
AGE 6-10 *
123.2102.3112.7
133-8108.9119.6
122. 1
J07.8
II4.5
120. 1
100.9
II0.9
IO7.O
HO. 8
109.5
102. 1
116.6109.7
106.9103.4105.2
107-399.2
102.6
117.8112. 2
H5.O
MEAN IQARTHUR,
AGE 6-1 1 *
116.6107.4112. 2
IIO.5
I I I . 2
I I0 .9
99.6
100. 0
99-9
96.692.294-5
98.691-394-4
93-0106.499-7
84.190.887.5
100.5101.6IOI . I
97-7100. i98.9
(Cornell-Coxe)116.0HO. 2
II2.7
MEANIQARTHUR,AGE 6-15 *
115.0
110.7
99-6
96.5
95-9
99.4
86.9
102.6
IOI . I
* Inclusive.
R. J. HAVIGHURST, M. K. GUNTHER AND I. E. PRATT
the boys on the Draw-a-Man and theArthur tests. The Hickiwan-GuVogroup showed no statistically significantdifference between the sexes, in a smallsample. The middle-western whitegroup showed a slight superiority ofgirls over boys on the Draw-a-ManTest, while the boys had an equalmargin of superiority over the girls onthe Cornell-Coxe test. Neither of thesedifferences is statistically significant.
Dennis's results for his total group areslightly lower than ours. This is prob-ably due to the fact that he includedone school (Hotevila) which did notappear in our sample and which testedlower than the other two schools. Hefound a mean IQ of 108.3 f°r X52 cn^~dren, aged six through ten. Our datagave an average of 115.6 for 66 children,aged six through ten. Dennis found thegirls to average 99.5 and the boys 116.6.
TABLE 3
MEAN DRAW-A-MAN IQ's AND SD's FOR TRIBAL GROUPS
GROUP
No.Mean IQSD
HOPI
78"3-317.4
ZUNI
42in. 720.7
ZlA
32109.617.2
NAVAHO
47109.716.3
Sioux
53109.116.9
PAP AGO
74106.920.6
MIDWEST (WHITE)
66101 .219.0
Our results on Hopi children can becompared with those of Dennis (i),who tested most of these same childrena year earlier with the Draw-a-ManTest. Our results are in substantialagreement with those of Dennis. Hehas given us his IQ's for the 64 childrenwho were tested by us as well as byhim. Omitting one case on which wedisagreed with him about the age ofthe subject, we present a comparisonof the results in Table 4.
We found the girls to average 105.6 andthe boys 127.0. The difference betweenthe sexes Dennis found to be 17 points,while we found it to be 21 points. Theproduct-moment coefficient of correla-tion between our results and Dennis'swas 0.52.
Dennis found the average IQ of thegirls to decrease with age, while thatof the boys increased with age. His dif-ferences were not quite statistically reli-able. We, too, found the average IQ
TABLE 4
COMPARISON OF CHICAGO AND DENNIS RESULTS ON THE HOPI DRAW-A-MAN TEST
BoysGirls
ORAIBI
No.
1417
MEAN IQ
CHICAGO
120.898.9
DENNIS
115.998.9
FIRST MESA
No.
15i?
MEAN IQ
CHICAGO
130.2107.1
DENNIS
128.2107.5
ENVIRONMENT AND THE DRAW-A-MAN TEST 57
of the Hopi girls in this test to decreasewith age, but that the boys remainedpractically constant.
To study further the relation betweenage and Draw-a-Man IQ, we dividedour subjects into three age groups, 6-7,8-9, jo-ii; and calculated mean IQ'sfor each sex and each community.There were no consistent trends withage. We then combined both sexesand all the tribal groups into fourage groups, with results as shown inTable 5.
TABLE 5
DRAW-A-MAN IQ IN RELATION TO AGE
AGE
NumberMean IQ
6-7
98112. 2
8-9
105108.3
10
69IIO. 2
II
51105.8
Our results on Zuni children do notagree very well with those of Rus-sell (14), who found a mean IQ of 105with no sex difference. Our girls' scoresagree fairly well with those of Russell,but our boys' scores are much higher.Since Russell's sample and our sampleof boys are both small, 14 and 18 re-spectively, it is natural to look into thesampling procedures as a possible sourceof the differences. Our sampling pro-cedure has been described. Russelltested the children in the summer schooloperated by the Indian Service in thefarming community of Nutria, wherea portion of the Zuni residents live eachsummer. It seems possible that someselective factors may have operated tosend an atypical group of boys to sum-mer school in this community.
To find out what relation there wasbetween performance on the Draw-a-Man Test and performance on theGrace Arthur Performance Test, wecalculated product-moment correlation
coefficients for the Zuni, Hopi (Oraibiand First Mesa combined), Navaho(Shiprock), Sioux (Pine Ridge andKyle combined) and Papago (Topawa)data. The results are shown in Table 6.
TABLE 6
CORRELATION COEFFICIENTS OF DRAW-A-MANAND GRACE ARTHUR IQ's
GROUP
ZuniHopiNavaho (Shiprock)SiouxPapago (Topawa)
r
. IO±. IO
.2I±.07
!33±!o8.64±.o6
These coefficients are quite low, withthe exception of that for Topawa. Theyare much lower than we should expectamong white children. For the mid-west children the correlation coefficientof Cornell-Coxe IQ with Draw-a-ManIQ is .63 ± .05. The correlation co-efficient of Stanford-Binet IQ withDraw-a-Man is .50 ± .06 for the mid-west group. Goodenough found anr of .75 between Stanford-Binet andDraw-a-Man IQ's for white children.
DISCUSSION OF RESULTS
We shall organize our discussionaround the following topics:
1. A critique of the Draw-a-ManTest.
2. The superiority of boys over girlsin most of the Indian groups.
3. The superiority of Indian overwhite children.
Is the Draw-a-Man Test a useful testof intelligence for Indian children ofthe tribes we have studied? We cannotanswer this question with finality, forwe lack data on an undeniably truecriterion of intelligence for these chil-dren, such as their ability to makesocially and personally satisfactory re-
R. J. HAVIGHURST, M. K. GUNTHER AND I. E. PRATT
sponses to the problems with whichthey are commonly confronted in theirlives. Our answer must be indirect andsomewhat unsatisfactory.
Many test experts believe that theArthur is a better test of general intel-ligence than the Draw-a-Man becausethe former consists of a variety of typesof performance, and the latter of butone type. If we should assume that theArthur Performance Test is a good testof general intelligence for these chil-dren, we would infer from our data thatthe Draw-a-Man test is not a good testof general intelligence for any of ourgroups except possibly the Papago(Topawa) group, because the co-efficients of correlation between Arthurand Draw-a-Man IQ's are low for allexcept the Papago (Topawa) group.
Following out this assumption, Good-enough's argument for the close rela-tionship in young children between con-cept development as shown in drawingand general intelligence might be modi-fied to suggest that concept develop-ment is one aspect of general intelli-gence. As such, it may or may not beclosely related with other aspects ofgeneral intelligence. In this case theDraw-a-Man Test might be expected tomeasure this one aspect of intelligence.If so, this aspect—namely, concept de-velopment—appears to be more closelyrelated to other aspects of intelligencein white American culture than in mostof the Indian cultures which we havestudied.
It might be supposed that to theextent that Indian children are livingin organized groups which are success-fully meeting the stern conditions im-posed on them by the natural environ-ment and by their own social organiza-tion, they would be stimulated to ob-serve, take an active interest in and dealin a systematic, organized manner withthe world of man and nature, and to
form unified concepts out of the fluxof particulars observed through theirsenses. As a result, the children woulddevelop the ability at an early age toform concepts of the detailed form andorganization of the human body whichare tested in the Draw-a-Man Test.
Dr. Laura Thompson has appliedthis hypothesis to the Hopi groups, asfollows:8
One sex, (the boys) is stimulated to becomeaware of, take an active interest in and ex-press through the medium of ritual dramascertain aspects of the world of nature (includ-ing man, animals, kachinas, the elements,etc.) while the other sex (girls) have interestsincreasingly narrowed with age to house,household tasks, etc. The life which the boyslead, and especially their economic and cere-monial responsibilities, forces them to becomemore observant and to express themselvesaesthetically more than does the life of thegirls. The ceremonial complex (especially atFirst Mesa, where it functions practicallyintact) provides channels of logico-aestheticdevelopment and expression including thesong, the dance, the prayer, graphic arts,and impersonation. On the other hand, theHopi culture offers the girls less rich mentaland emotional development and less creativeoutlet at the aesthetic level. At Oraibi thisis mainly in the form of plaque-making, inwhich the medium limits the design develop-ment more than is the case at First Mesawhere painted pottery is the main mediumof aesthetic expression.
Drawing experience is probably oneof the many interrelated factors whichmay be operating to produce the resultrevealed by the test. Concerning thispoint it should be noted that many ofthe Indian tribes whose culture andsocial organization have remained rela-tively intact in the face of intrusion ofwhite American culture use drawingand painting as a part of the routineof life. Adults in every family do somedrawing and painting. The child ob-serves this and imitates his elders in
3 Private communication from Dr. LauraThompson. For a full account of the lives ofHopi boys and girls, see (16).
ENVIRONMENT AND THE DRAW-A-MAN TEST 59
the artistic activities which are appro-priate to his sex. Furthermore, theIndian Service schools, in recent years,at least, have encouraged children todraw and paint by providing materials,allotting time, and rewarding the moresuccessful ones with opportunities tostudy art in boarding schools and tosell their products.
We shall now sum up our hypothesisand then attempt to apply it in the inter-pretation of our results. The Draw-a-Man Test may be a useful test of oneaspect of general intelligence, namely,the ability to form concepts based uponobservation. The children of certainIndian tribes are especially stimulatedto observe the external world accuratelyand to form concepts of natural objects,including the human body. Moreover,they are given plentiful opportunity andeven encouraged or required to drawand paint these concepts.
How does this hypothesis account forthe observed sex differences among thevarious tribes? The Pueblo boys andthe Sioux were definitely superior tothe girls. There was no difference be-tween the sexes in the Navaho group.The girls were superior to the boys inthe Papago (Topawa) group.
Superiority of the boys over the girlsin the Hopi group has already beenexplained according to the hypothesis.Similar considerations apply in the Zuniand Zia pueblos. An anthropologistwrites the following of the Zia pueblo:
From the time a boy can handle a pencilor a brush he is encouraged to draw andto paint. His subjects are usually animals,although cowboys riding or roping are like-wise frequent subjects. Parents and siblingsencourage the youngsters with admirationand criticism. Girls rarely draw picturesexcept in school, but by the time the childrenstart school the boys are much more advancedin their ease of handling pencils and colorsand even more in their ability to put theiraccurate observations of animal forms andmovements onto paper. The pueblo expects
its boys to be able to paint animals uponthe house walls at Christmas to encouragefertility, as well as to work later at paintingthe ceremonial masks, altars, and other cere-monial paraphernalia. Girls are expected topaint nothing but the conventionalized de-signs used on pottery. (9)
Some further information is given bythe analysis of the free drawings of thechildren, which shows that the boysdraw more animals and human figuresthan the girls, who draw more houses.Table 7 reports the relative frequenciesof animal or human figures in the freedrawings for the various tribes (n).
If we had only the results from thePueblo groups, we should point out thatthe boys draw human and animalfigures almost twice as often as girls,and we should suggest that in this factlies part of the explanation of the boys'superiority over the girls in the Draw-a-Man Test. But the Navaho (Ship-rock) boys also exceed the girls in thefrequency of their human and animaldrawings, yet they do not do better thanthe girls in the Draw-a-Man Test. Andthe Sioux boys and girls draw suchfigures equally often, yet the boys ex-ceed the girls on the test. Consequently,the relative frequency of drawinghuman and animal figures under theconditions of our "free drawing" testcannot be taken as a strict correlate ofperformance on the Draw-a-Man Test.
Analysis of the free drawings of theHopi children with respect to theirtreatment of space and their use of themedium was made by a universityteacher of art. He found that
the boys draw with increasing assurance, asthough they felt secure in what they aredoing, whereas the girls seem to draw withincreasing hesitation and uncertainty. Thedifference becomes more pronounced as theygrow older.—The drawings indicate a gen-erally superior ability of boys over girls. (12)
The superiority of Papago (Topawa)girls over boys in our data is probably
6o R. J. HAVIGHURST, M. K. GUNTHER AND I. E. PRATT
due to an accident in our sampling forthe Draw-a-Man Test. In Table 2 itwill be seen that in the group whichtook this test the girls exceeded the boyson the Arthur as well as this test. Yetin the larger Topawa group (aged 6through 15) there was no significantsex difference on the Arthur test. Henceit would seem reasonable to supposethat the smaller group (aged 6 throughu) which took the Draw-a-Man Testwas not a representative sample ofTopawa children. This supposition ispartially verified by the fact that the
but that one sex is not encouraged morethan the other to practice drawing.*
The results of the testing in the otherPapago (Hickiwan-GuVo) group donot throw much light on the question.5
The number of cases was small, and aconsiderable proportion of the childrendid not attend school and were nottested. Hence we cannot be sure thatwe have a representative sample fromthis group.
Our hypothesis may be applied to theSioux as follows: As a part of theiradaptation to a hunting and fighting
TABLE 7
SEX DIFFERENCES IN RELATIVE FREQUENCIES OF ANIMAL OR HUMAN FIGURES IN FREE DRAWINGS
(Percentage frequencies of animal or human figures, ages 5-18)
GROUP
BoysGirls
ORAIBI
138
FIRST MESA
3i19
TOPAWA
'4ii
HlCKIWAN-GuVb
1819
ZlA
443i
ZUNI•-<
K»
ON O
OKYLE
12
15
PINE RIDGE
'9i?
SHIPROCK
2513
four girls aged 6-u who took theArthur but not the Draw-a-Man Testaveraged 87 on the Arthur test, whilethe five boys who took the Arthur butnot the Draw-a-Man Test averaged 99on the Arthur test. If these childrenhad all taken the Draw-a-Man Test,it seems probable that the sex differencein favor of the girls on the Draw-a-Man Test would have been somewhatreduced.
To find out whether there was any-thing in the life of Papago childrenthat would favor one sex or the otheron a test of this sort, we asked Mrs.Ruth Evelyn Jones, the teacher on thePapago Reservation who supervised theadministration of the drawing test, todescribe the typical experience ofPapago children with drawing. Shewrites that there is the usual sex dif-ference in the objects drawn by boysand girls in their free time in school,
way of life, the Sioux developed a tradi-tion of scouting, which required keensystematic observation of details andmemory of them in interrelationship,even though their significance was notimmediately known. This traditionfurther included the putting-together ofdetails into constructs, such as "so-and-
4 For a full account of the lives of Papago boysand girls, see (8).
0 One case of the Hickiwan-GuVo group wasexcluded in calculating the mean score because itdeviated unusually far from the mean. This wasa case of a boy aged six years and seven monthswho earned an IQ of 189 on the Draw-a-ManTest. On the Arthur test he was sixth in thegroup of 25, with an IQ of 104. His teacher,unaware of his superior standing on the Draw-a-Man Test, wrote the following about him, "} •is interested in none of his school work exceptdrawing, which he does very well. It is veryhard to get him to study. As soon as my back isturned, he starts drawing or coloring. Often Ihave to take his paper and pencil away to gethim to do his work." As is customary in cal-culating the mean of a small number of scores, theextreme score of this boy was omitted in calculat-ing the mean of his group.
ENVIRONMENT AND THE DRAW-A-MAN TEST 61
so has been in this neighborhood re-, cently," "a person with such-and-suchpersonal appearance must have left thesemarks of his presence." This was partof the male tradition, and.was handedfrom father to son. It is still in themale tradition for the Sioux, althoughthe fighting and hunting life has dis-solved. Dr. Macgregor (10), anthro-pologist working in the Sioux country,reports that keen observation and mem-ory for details are striking characteristicsof present-day Sioux, and that boys areencouraged by the men to train them-selves in this way. Homburger (7), inhis report on child-rearing among theSioux, says that the little boys areencouraged to play hunting and cow-boy games. These would keep alivethis tradition.
Thus the superiority of Sioux boysover girls on the Draw-a-Man Test maybe explained as due to training in theformation of concepts based uponobservation. But the Kyle group, bothboys and girls, are superior to the PineRidge group. How is this to be ex-plained ? Assuming that the Pine Ridgetests are a representative sample of theperformance of Pine Ridge children,which has not been established, the fol-lowing explanation seems possible:Kyle is a rural community, while PineRidge is the reservation headquartersand is much more influenced by whiteculture. The Sioux tradition is muchstronger at Kyle. Furthermore, thechildren in the Kyle community, bothboys and girls, are actively engaged inwork with animals and with the land,and they roam the countryside morefreely. These facts suggest that theKyle group might be expected to besuperior generally to the Pine Ridgegroup on a test of concept formationbased on sense observation.
The lack of sex difference in theNavaho (Shiprock) tests is explained
by Dr. Dorothea Leighton as follows:"It seems quite understandable that little-or
no sex difference appears on the Shiprocktests which are limited to children under 12years. There are no art expectations ofNavaho children of either sex, and littlegraphic art experience. Both sexes see cere-monial drypaintings, see their mothers weavedesigns in blankets, may see their fathersmake silver jewelry. Few girls would beweaving designs by the age of n or 12,equally few boys taking any part in silver-work. At the same time, both sexes areaccustomed to learning by observation, bothhave experience of being sent out to herdsheep, to take them to water, to find roam-ing horses. All of these items would tendto make Navaho children observant of detailsof nature, including probably human figures,but would give neither sex any special advan-tage as compared with the other.
The general superiority of the Indianchildren over white children on theDraw-a-Man Test is the final fact tobe discussed in the light of our hy-pothesis. According to this hypothesis,the children of Indian tribes which havekept close touch with the world ofnature and with their indigenous cul-tures are specially stimulated to observeaccurately, to organize their observa-tions and express them aesthetically,and thus they may be expected to dowell on the Draw-a-Man Test. Whitechildren, and urban white childrenespecially, may have much less chanceto form concepts from first-hand ob-servation, but must rely more uponbooks and words. Following this lineof thought we should expect the Indiangroups which have been most adaptedto the white culture to test more nearlythe same as white children. The PineRidge group of the Sioux is closest tothe white culture, and does test closestto the white norms. The Kyle groupof the Sioux are less affected by the
6 Private communication from Dr. Leighton.For a full account of the Navaho and theirchildren, see Clyde Kluckhohn and DorotheaLeighton (9).
62 R. J. HAVIGHURST, M. K. GUNTHER AND I. E. PRATT
white culture than are the Pine Ridgegroup, and they score higher on thetest. However, this small bit of proofcannot be relied upon heavily, for thePine Ridge group which we tested wassmall and may not have been a goodsample.
The study made by Rohrer (13) tendsto confirm our hypothesis. In his study,Indian and white children who attendedthe same public school in Oklahomaand lived in much the same way cameout about equal and close to the whitenorms. On the other hand, the earlierstudies of the performance of Indianchildren on the Draw-a-Man Test, re-ported by Goodenough (4) and by Tel-ford (15), gave these children verylow IQ's, and yet they were living onreservations, cut off pretty much fromparticipation in white culture. To un-derstand these earlier results we shouldprobably need to know about the moraleof the children, of their families, andof their school teachers, whether thechildren had grown up in their ownhomes or in boarding school, and whatthe school practices were with respectto drawing and painting in those days.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
The Goodenough Draw-a-Man Testwas given to 325 Indian children of theSioux, Hopi, Zuni, Zia, Navaho, andPapago tribes in nine communities, inthe age group 6 through n. The sub-jects were selected so as to representtheir communities, and the samplingprocedure appears to have been satis-factory in at least five of the nine com-munities. The results show the Indianchildren to be superior to white chil-dren. Average IQ's range from 117(Hopi, First Mesa) to 102 (Sioux, PineRidge). Boys do significantly betterthan girls in the Hopi, Zuni, Zia, andSioux groups. Intelligence quotients
from the Arthur Performance Test wereavailable for the same subjects. Correla-tion coefficients between Draw-a-Manand Arthur IQ's are low, except for thePapago (Topawa) group, where thecorrelation is about the same as thatfound in white groups. There is prob-ably no change of Draw-a-Man IQwith age among the Indian children.
On the hypothesis that the Draw-aMan Test is a valid test of one aspectof general intelligence, namely, theformation of concepts based upon ob-servation, with the aid of informationabout the various cultures in which theIndian children grow up, we can givea reasonable explanation for most of ourfindings, including the superiority ofboys over girls in several tribes, and thesuperiority of the Indian children westudied over white children. The In-dian children, and especially the boys,are stimulated to take an active interestin the world of nature, and given muchopportunity to form and express con-cepts of natural objects, including thehuman body, on the basis of their ownobservation. Hence they should beexpected to do well on a test whichrelies mainly upon concepts formedfrom observation and reported by draw-ing, without any necessary use oflanguage.
From this study we may concludethat:
1. Indian children from the tribestested do better than white children onthe Draw-a-Man Test.
2. Indian boys from Pueblo groupsdo better than girls on the Draw-a-ManTest.
3. The evidence points strongly to theconclusion that environment affects theperformance of children on the Draw-a-Man Test.
4. The validity of the Draw-a-ManTest as a test of general intelligence foruse with Indian children is not estab-
ENVIRONMENT AND THE DRAW-A-MAN TEST
lished by this study. However, thehypothesis that the Draw-a-Man Testis valid for one aspect of general in-telligence, the ability to form conceptsbased upon observation, is supported tosome extent by cultural data on severalof the Indian groups.
REFERENCES
1. DENNIS, W. The performance of Hopi chil-dren on the Goodenough Draw-a-ManTest, /. comp. Psychol., 1942, 34, 341-348.
2. EELLS, W. C. Mental ability of the nativeraces of Alaska. /. appl. Psychol., 1933',17, 417-438.
3. GOODENOUGH, F. L. Measurements of intelli-gence by drawings. New York: WorldBook Co., 1926.
4. GOODENOUGH, F. L. Racial differences in theintelligence of school children. /. exf.Psychol., 1926, 9, 388-395.
5. HAVIGHURST, R. ]., & HILKEVITCH, RHEA R.The intelligence of Indian children asmeasured by a performance scale. ThisJOURNAL, 1944, 39, 419-433.
6. HAWLEY, FLORENCE. Unpublished manu-script, Univ. N. Mex.
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8. JOSEPH, ALICE, SPICER, ROSAMOND, & CHESKY,JANE. The desert people. (In press.)
9. KLUCKHOHN, C., & LEIGHTON, DOROTHEA.The people and their children. (In press.)
10. MACGREGOR, G. Warriors without weapons.Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1946.
u. MORDY, B. An analysis of free drawings ofSouthwestern and Sioux Indian children.Unpublished manuscript, Committee onHuman Development, Univ. Chicago.
12. RANNELLS, E. W. Drawings by Hopi chil-dren. Unpublished manuscript, Commit-tee on Human Development, Univ.Chicago.
13. ROHRER, J. H. The test intelligence of OsageIndians, /. soc. Psychol., 1942, 16, 99-105.
14. RUSSELL, R. W. The spontaneous and in-structed drawings of Zuni children. /.comp. Psychol., 1943, 35, 11-15.
15. TELFORD, C. W. Test performance of full-and mixed-blood North Dakota Indians./. comp. Psychol., 1932, 14, 123-145.
16. THOMPSON, LAURA, & JOSEPH, ALICE. TheHopi way. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press,1944-